Date: 8/10/2008 6:43 PM
By ANDRE COE and ANA LEY
Associated Press Writers
SHERMAN, Texas (AP) _ Companies linked to a bus that crashed in Texas and killed 17 people pose an “imminent hazard” and must cease commercial operations, federal officials said Sunday, shortly after authorities took another bus out of service in Missouri because it failed an inspection.
Inspectors found the other bus operating in Carthage, Mo., said National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Debbie Hersman. It was registered to Iguala BusMex Inc., the unlicensed company that also owned the bus in the Texas crash.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued its cease-operations order to Iguala BusMex and Angel Tours Inc., of which Angel De La Torre is owner and president. A second order issued to him finds that his “activities in connection with motor carrier operations pose an ‘imminent hazard’ to the public.”
Angel Tours’ voicemail system was full Sunday and not accepting new messages.
The bus in the Texas crash mashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday at Sherman near the Oklahoma border, killing 12 people at the scene and five others who died at hospitals.
The passengers, most of them from three Vietnamese Catholic congregations in Houston, were traveling to Missouri for an annual religious festival.
Authorities have also released the driving record of the bus driver, 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard. Since 2001, he has been cited by police three times — once for driving while intoxicated and twice for speeding.
His license was suspended from for nearly two months in 2001 as a result of the DWI conviction in Harris County, Hersman said. His speeding violations came in 2007 and 2004. Broussard also failed roadside inspections twice in the past year, both times resulting in his vehicle being taken out of service for driver logbook violations.
Robert Accetta, the NTSB member leading the investigation, said officials were still fact-finding. An investigator will travel to Houston with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to find information about Iguala BusMex and Angel Tours.
Lt. Bob Fair of the Sherman Police Department said his agency is finishing inspections of the bus. He declined to comment on whether any criminal charges would be filed.
Authorities said the vehicle’s right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards.
___
Ana Ley reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Jeff Carlton and Matt Curry in Dallas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
911 callers told of carnage at Texas bus wreck
Sadly, this is not the first church bus crash of the summer. Earlier this year we blogged about a fatal crash in Alabama on a cross country church camp trip. In that crash, one child died and his brother was seriously brain injured. See http://bus-accident.blogspot.com/2008/06/church-camp-caravan-crashes-in-alabama.html
These church expeditions come with significantly increased risk of injury, as the drivers are often not professionals and the trips are too long for drivers not governed by strict federal fatigue standards. See http://semi-accident.com/fatigue.html
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://fishtail.tv
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 8/9/2008 6:03 PM
By ANDRE COE
Associated Press Writer
SHERMAN, Texas (AP) _ Witnesses who called 911 after the crash of a charter bus that killed at least 16 people described a chaotic scene, telling emergency workers of bloody passengers crushed beneath the smoking wreckage, according to calls released Saturday by police.
The unlicensed bus carrying 55 members of a Vietnamese Catholic group from Houston to Carthage, Mo., for a religious festival smashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday near the Texas-Oklahoma state line. Twelve people died at the scene and four more died at hospitals.
One emergency call began with a female crash victim speaking in accented English over the screams and moans of other passengers. After struggling to answer the 911 operator’s questions, she handed the phone to a man who had apparently arrived at the scene immediately after the crash.
“We’ve got people crushed underneath the bus,” the man said. “The bus is smoking. It might catch fire.”
A female caller told a 911 operator that there were passengers “just everywhere out here laid out on the ground. They are bloody.” Another caller said: “There’s people screaming for help.”
Most of the passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and two other mostly Vietnamese congregations in Houston, heading to an annual festival honoring the Virgin Mary. The Marian Days pilgrimage, which started in the late 1970s, attracts thousands of Catholics of Vietnamese descent and includes a large outdoor Mass each day, entertainment and camping at night.
By late Saturday morning, traffic was back to normal and a damaged guardrail had been replaced. Several bouquets of carnations, tulips and roses were left on an embankment amid shards of glass and burned grass.
Authorities said the vehicle’s right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. The tread separated from the tire in a process called delamination. It is legal to retread such tires but they may not be used on the wheels that steer the bus, she said.
After the tire blew out, the bus skidded about 130 feet before striking a guardrail, Hersman said. It then traveled nearly 120 feet before coming to rest down the embankment.
Authorities said Saturday they believe the 2002 model bus, a 45-foot long motor coach, was equipped with a device that could record information, similar to a black box on an airplane. If that device is found, it could help investigators learn how fast the bus was going and whether the driver hit the brakes or the accelerator at the time of the crash, Hersman said.
The driver, 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard, had a commercial license, but his medical certification expired in May, according to the NTSB. Broussard was stable at a hospital. Authorities took blood samples from Broussard on Friday but do not have the results, Hersman said.
Broussard was convicted in 2001 of driving while intoxicated in Houston and sentenced to 10 days in prison and a $225 fine, according to online records from the Texas Department of Public Safety. He has also been arrested at least three other times and was sentenced to two years in prison in 1998 for violating probation.
The bus operator, Iguala BusMex Inc. of Houston, had applied in June for a federal license to operate as a charter but was still awaiting approval, according to online records. The company recently filed incorporation papers, listing the same owner and address as Angel Tours Inc., which was forced by federal regulators to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review.
The review cited the company for problems in three areas: using a driver before receiving a pre-employment result, failing to require a driver to prepare a vehicle inspection report and using a driver who wasn’t medically re-examined every two years.
A May 1 review by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration cited the company for violations including a lax drug and alcohol testing program, Hersman said. Two of five drivers did not have current medical certificates, and 27 of 28 vehicle inspections were missing, she said.
Neither entity is authorized to operate as a carrier in interstate commerce, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The bus was registered under temporary tags that were to expire Saturday, Hersman said. The NTSB is looking into the history of the sale of the bus, which was sold by a bus company in New York.
A man at Angel Tours in Houston declined to comment Friday. The company’s voicemail system was full Saturday and not accepting new messages, and no one answered Saturday at a listing for the company’s attorney.
“We’re in the middle of a very intense investigation,” attorney Keena Greyling told the Houston Chronicle, the newspaper reported Saturday on its Web site. “Because of that, we really can’t discuss anything further.”
Vu Pham, 35, of Houston, said his brother, sister-in-law, mother and 12-year-old nephew were on the bus. His brother, whose left leg has been paralyzed since he was a boy because of polio, remained in intensive care Saturday in a Sherman hospital, he said.
“We thought it would be better for him to get on the bus because it’s a far drive,” Pham said. “Now he keeps saying that he should have driven himself.”
It was the nation’s deadliest bus crash since 2004, when 15 people were killed in a wreck in Arkansas on their way to Mississippi’s casinos. In 2005, 23 people were killed near Dallas when a bus carrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
___
Associated Press writers Jeff Carlton and Danny Robbins in Dallas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
These church expeditions come with significantly increased risk of injury, as the drivers are often not professionals and the trips are too long for drivers not governed by strict federal fatigue standards. See http://semi-accident.com/fatigue.html
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://fishtail.tv
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 8/9/2008 6:03 PM
By ANDRE COE
Associated Press Writer
SHERMAN, Texas (AP) _ Witnesses who called 911 after the crash of a charter bus that killed at least 16 people described a chaotic scene, telling emergency workers of bloody passengers crushed beneath the smoking wreckage, according to calls released Saturday by police.
The unlicensed bus carrying 55 members of a Vietnamese Catholic group from Houston to Carthage, Mo., for a religious festival smashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday near the Texas-Oklahoma state line. Twelve people died at the scene and four more died at hospitals.
One emergency call began with a female crash victim speaking in accented English over the screams and moans of other passengers. After struggling to answer the 911 operator’s questions, she handed the phone to a man who had apparently arrived at the scene immediately after the crash.
“We’ve got people crushed underneath the bus,” the man said. “The bus is smoking. It might catch fire.”
A female caller told a 911 operator that there were passengers “just everywhere out here laid out on the ground. They are bloody.” Another caller said: “There’s people screaming for help.”
Most of the passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and two other mostly Vietnamese congregations in Houston, heading to an annual festival honoring the Virgin Mary. The Marian Days pilgrimage, which started in the late 1970s, attracts thousands of Catholics of Vietnamese descent and includes a large outdoor Mass each day, entertainment and camping at night.
By late Saturday morning, traffic was back to normal and a damaged guardrail had been replaced. Several bouquets of carnations, tulips and roses were left on an embankment amid shards of glass and burned grass.
Authorities said the vehicle’s right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. The tread separated from the tire in a process called delamination. It is legal to retread such tires but they may not be used on the wheels that steer the bus, she said.
After the tire blew out, the bus skidded about 130 feet before striking a guardrail, Hersman said. It then traveled nearly 120 feet before coming to rest down the embankment.
Authorities said Saturday they believe the 2002 model bus, a 45-foot long motor coach, was equipped with a device that could record information, similar to a black box on an airplane. If that device is found, it could help investigators learn how fast the bus was going and whether the driver hit the brakes or the accelerator at the time of the crash, Hersman said.
The driver, 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard, had a commercial license, but his medical certification expired in May, according to the NTSB. Broussard was stable at a hospital. Authorities took blood samples from Broussard on Friday but do not have the results, Hersman said.
Broussard was convicted in 2001 of driving while intoxicated in Houston and sentenced to 10 days in prison and a $225 fine, according to online records from the Texas Department of Public Safety. He has also been arrested at least three other times and was sentenced to two years in prison in 1998 for violating probation.
The bus operator, Iguala BusMex Inc. of Houston, had applied in June for a federal license to operate as a charter but was still awaiting approval, according to online records. The company recently filed incorporation papers, listing the same owner and address as Angel Tours Inc., which was forced by federal regulators to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review.
The review cited the company for problems in three areas: using a driver before receiving a pre-employment result, failing to require a driver to prepare a vehicle inspection report and using a driver who wasn’t medically re-examined every two years.
A May 1 review by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration cited the company for violations including a lax drug and alcohol testing program, Hersman said. Two of five drivers did not have current medical certificates, and 27 of 28 vehicle inspections were missing, she said.
Neither entity is authorized to operate as a carrier in interstate commerce, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The bus was registered under temporary tags that were to expire Saturday, Hersman said. The NTSB is looking into the history of the sale of the bus, which was sold by a bus company in New York.
A man at Angel Tours in Houston declined to comment Friday. The company’s voicemail system was full Saturday and not accepting new messages, and no one answered Saturday at a listing for the company’s attorney.
“We’re in the middle of a very intense investigation,” attorney Keena Greyling told the Houston Chronicle, the newspaper reported Saturday on its Web site. “Because of that, we really can’t discuss anything further.”
Vu Pham, 35, of Houston, said his brother, sister-in-law, mother and 12-year-old nephew were on the bus. His brother, whose left leg has been paralyzed since he was a boy because of polio, remained in intensive care Saturday in a Sherman hospital, he said.
“We thought it would be better for him to get on the bus because it’s a far drive,” Pham said. “Now he keeps saying that he should have driven himself.”
It was the nation’s deadliest bus crash since 2004, when 15 people were killed in a wreck in Arkansas on their way to Mississippi’s casinos. In 2005, 23 people were killed near Dallas when a bus carrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
___
Associated Press writers Jeff Carlton and Danny Robbins in Dallas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
